Controlled flight into terrain

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2009)

Controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) describes a collision whereby an airworthy aircraft, under pilot control, inadvertently flies into terrain, an obstacle, or water. The term was developed by engineers at Boeing in the late 1970s.^{[citation needed]} The pilots are generally unaware of the danger until it is too late.

Contents 1 Causes 2 Solutions 3 Notable accidents 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Causes

Pilots with any level of experience, even highly experienced professionals, may commit CFIT. Pilot fatigue, loss of situational awareness, or disorientation may play a role. The incidents often involve a collision with significantly raised terrain such as hills or mountains, and may occur in conditions of clouds or otherwise reduced visibility. Pilots who enter cloud without navigational instruments–flying blind–have a life expectancy of somewhere around 19 seconds,^[1] either by flying into ground concealed by cloud, or due to disorientation and subsequent loss of control of their aircraft. CFIT often occurs during aircraft descent to landing, near an airport.

CFIT may be associated with equipment malfunction. If the malfunction occurs in a piece of navigational equipment, it may mislead the crew into improperly guiding the aircraft despite other information received from all properly functioning equipment, or despite clear sky visibility that should have allowed the crew to easily notice ground proximity (compare tunnel vision). In other cases, the usually minor malfunction does not affect the overall airworthiness of the plane, but may distract the crew from properly guiding the plane.

[edit] Solutions

In order to prevent the occurrence of CFIT accidents, manufacturers and safety regulators developed Terrain Awareness and Warning Systems, also known as TAWS. The first-generation of these TAWS systems is known as Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS), and uses a radar altimeter to assist in calculating terrain closure rates. This system has now been further improved with the addition of a GPS terrain database. Now known as Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS), both systems have mandatory pilot procedures and actions following any caution or warning event.^[2]

Statistics show that aircraft fitted with a second-generation EGPWS have not suffered a CFIT accident.^[3] As of 2007, 5% of the world's commercial airlines still lack a TAWS, leading to a prediction of two CFIT accidents in 2009.^[3]

[edit] Notable accidents

Many notable accidents have been ascribed to CFIT.

• TWA Flight 3 — January 16, 1942. Hollywood movie star Carole Lombard was one of the victims.

• The famous crash of the Star Dust airliner on August 2, 1947. Due to a misjudgment of position, the flight crew appear to have believed that the aircraft was approaching the airport of Santiago, when in fact it was still above Tupungato mountain in the Andes. The plane vanished shortly after its last transmission estimating the time of its arrival at Santiago. Its wreckage was discovered fifty years later.

• The Superga air disaster, May 4, 1949, in which almost the entire Torino A.C. football team was killed in a collision with the hill of Superga, near Turin.

• Pan Am Flight 151 — June 21, 1951

• British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines Flight 304 — October 29, 1953. American pianist William Kapell was one of the victims.

• Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 810 — December 9, 1956

• Northeast Airlines Flight 823—February 1, 1957

• 1958 Bristol Britannia 312 crash — December 24, 1958‎

• American Airlines Flight 320 — February 3, 1959

• TAA Fokker Friendship disaster — June 10, 1960

• Alitalia Flight 771 — July 7, 1962

• United Airlines Flight 389 — August 16, 1965

• American Airlines Flight 383 — November 8, 1965

• Iberia Airlines Flight 062 — November 4, 1967. British film and television actress June Thorburn was one of the victims.

• Southern Airways Flight 932 — November 14, 1970. Crashed near Huntington, West Virginia, killing all 75 on board, including 37 members of the Marshall University Thundering Herd football team. The crash was the subject of the 2006 feature film, We Are Marshall.

• Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 — known less formally as the Andes flight disaster, October 13, 1972 to December 23, 1972, during which stranded snow-bound survivors resorted to cannibalism.
  

  

  Survivors amongst the wreckage of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571
  The incident became the subject of feature films and best-selling books.

• The crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 near Miami, Florida on December 29, 1972. The cockpit crew became fixated on a faulty landing gear light and had failed to realize that the autopilot had been switched off. The distracted crew did not recognize the plane's slow descent and the otherwise completely airworthy aircraft struck swampy ground in the Everglades, killing 101 out of 176 passengers and crew. This accident became the subject of books and made-for-television movies.

• Delta Air Lines Flight 723 — July 31, 1973

• TWA Flight 514 — Dec 1, 1974

• The crash of Air New Zealand Flight 901 into Mount Erebus, Antarctica on November 28, 1979. There is still disagreement over the exact causes of the crash, but it is commonly accepted that a changing of preprogrammed coordinates, the pilots' loss of situational awareness and whiteout conditions at the time were contributory factors leading to the crash. All 257 people on the plane were killed.

• Air India Flight 855 — January 1, 1978

• Mt. San Pietro disaster — December 1, 1981. Inex-Adria Aviopromet Flight 1308, flying from Ljubljana, Slovenia, to Ajaccio, Corsica, crashed into mountains shortly before it was scheduled to land. All 180 people on board were killed.

• Avianca Flight 011 — November 27, 1983

• Eastern Air Lines Flight 980 — January 1, 1985 struck Mount Illimani in Bolivia at an altitude of 19,600 feet. The flight took off from Silvio Pettirossi International Airport in Asunción, Paraguay, and intended to reach El Alto International Airport in La Paz, Bolivia. All 19 passengers and 10 crew were killed on impact.

• 1986 Mozambican Tupolev Tu-134 crash — October 19, 1986. Mozambican president Samora Machel and 33 others were killed.

• Avianca Flight 410 — March 17, 1988

• Indian Airlines Flight 113 — October 19, 1988. The aircraft hit an electric mast in Ahmedabad, India, five miles (eight km) out on approach in poor visibility. All six crew members and 124 of 129 passengers were killed.

• Independent Air Flight 1851 — February 8, 1989

• Surinam Airways Flight PY764 — June 7, 1989

• Indian Airlines Flight 605 — February 14, 1990. Crashed short of the runway during final approach to Bangalore, killing 92 on board.

• Air Inter Flight 148 — January 20, 1992. Crashed into Mt. Ste. Odile in the Vosges Mountains whilst on approach into Strasbourg Entzheim Airport.

• 59 days before the PIA Flight 268 accident at Kathmandu (see next item), Thai Airways International Flight 311 crashed on approach to Kathmandu. All 111 people on board were killed.

• The crash of Pakistan International Airlines Flight 268 on approach to Kathmandu on September 28, 1992. The approach to Kathmandu is difficult, as the airport is located in an oval-shaped valley surrounded by mountains. Flight 268 was approximately 900 feet below the designated approach path and crashed into a steep cloud-covered hillside. All 167 people on the plane were killed.

• Ansett New Zealand Flight 703 — June 5, 1995

• American Airlines Flight 1572 — November 12, 1995

• American Airlines Flight 965 — December 20, 1995. Crashed into a mountain near Cali, Colombia. The crew failed to recognize a series of navigational errors they had made, and forgot that they had deployed the air brakes. All eight crew members and 152 of the 156 passengers were killed.

• 1996 Croatia USAF CT-43 crash — April 3, 1996. A modified Boeing 737 crashed into a mountain in Croatia. One of the victims was United States Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown.

• Vnukovo Flight 2801 — August 29, 1996

• Korean Air Flight 801 — August 6, 1997

• Garuda Indonesia Flight 152 - The first two-cockpit Airbus A300, registered PK-GAI, crashed in Pancur Batu, Pematang Siantar, North Sumatera. Became the worst air disaster in Indonesian aviation history.

• 1996 New Hampshire Learjet crash — lost December 24, 1996; found November 13, 1999

• Crossair Flight 3597 — November 24, 2001. Flight from Berlin to Zurich that crashed during its landing approach, killing 24 people.

• Kam Air Flight 904 — February 3, 2005

• 2006 Slovak Air Force Antonov An-24 crash — January 19, 2006

• Armavia Flight 967 — May 3, 2006 - Pilot error

• Steve Fossett — Sep 3, 2007

• Atlasjet Flight 4203 — November 30, 2007 - Pilot error

• Santa Barbara Airlines Flight 518 — February 21, 2008

[edit] See also

• Air safety
• Digital fly-by-wire
• Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS)
• Terrain awareness and warning system (TAWS)
• Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• CFIT articles in SKYbrary: The single point of reference in the network of aviation safety knowledge

v • d • e Flight instruments Pitot-static instruments Altimeter · Airspeed indicator · Machmeter · Variometer Gyroscopic instruments Attitude indicator · Heading indicator · Horizontal situation indicator · Turn and bank indicator · Turn coordinator · Turn indicator Navigation Horizontal situation indicator · Course Deviation Indicator · Inertial navigation system · GPS · Magnetic compass · SIGI  · Satellite navigation systems Other Air data inertial reference unit · EFIS · Glass cockpit · V speeds · Yaw string